News

The more I learn about our complex society, the more our problems boil down to a basic failing: We don’t love our children enough.

No, this column isn’t about cancerous public liabilities, which diminish the future wealth of our kids in large measure to finance comfy lives and cheap health care for today’s retirees. It’s not even about California’s peculiar energy laws, which keep dirty old plants running so that solar and wind developers can get richer today with only marginal cuts to pollution, leaving the truly painful measures to future generations.

Instead, this column is about the soaring cost of housing in San Diego County. Crushing rents and crazy sale prices flow directly from our choices; the inevitable result of an old-fashioned shortage, caused by government fees and limits on new construction.

Not rocket science, this insight barely qualifies for Econ 101. In a functioning market, rising prices cause new suppliers to rush in. Yet in San Diego, as with most of coastal California, soaring housing prices have been greeted by falling construction activity.